Lock the Gate is one of the environmental groups that has been told to provide a breakdown of its expenditure.
Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

The environment department has recently begun sending letters to conservation groups registered as eligible for tax deductible donations, as they do every year. But this year the correspondence is different, in a disturbing way.

In the past the groups, which include all the big names such as the Australian Conservation Society, The Wilderness Society, Lock the Gate, Greenpeace etc, as well as small local conservation organisations, were simply asked to reveal the total expenditure from their public fund. This year they have also been asked to break down their expenditure into the amounts spent on “on ground environmental remediation”, “campaign and advocacy”, “research” and other administration.

It sounds like a boring technicality but it seems to represent a significant victory in the long-running campaign by the mining industry and conservative politicians to hobble advocacy for the environment.

According to the mining industry’s argument, enthusiastically adopted by conservative politicians including the resources minister, Matt Canavan, environmental groups should not be able to claim tax deductions for all the donations they get from members of the public who want to support their campaigns.

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Canavan, while a backbencher, conducted his own deep investigation of green groups’ activities for a previous Senate inquiry, concluding that tax deductibility should be pared back.

“It is appropriate that organisations and individuals may protest against political parties, philosophies and activities that offend them. It is not appropriate that such protests are funded by concessions from taxpayers who do not share their views,” he wrote at the time.

The mining industry peak bodies believe they should themselves be free to campaign for public subsidies for new coal mines or coal-fired generators, or to spend millions to overturn a mining tax, in the interests of, and funded by, their cashed-up multinational members.

But they say the environmental groups that argue for the interests of the natural environment should be able to receive tax deductible donations only for “on ground environmental remediation” – planting trees and the like – and not for public debate and advocacy.

That’s why the new reporting requirements are seen as ominous.

A cynic might think the greenies have been winning in the court of public opinion so the miners are trying to silence them by convincing politicians to change the regulations and the law.

And it’s been a long and determined campaign. It began in 2014 when the Liberal federal council voted in favour of a motion by former MP Andrew Nikolic. It continued in 2015 when the then environment minister Greg Hunt set up a parliamentary inquiry. Its report, tabled last year, recommended that environmental groups should spend at least a quarter of their money on “environmental remediation” work before they qualify as a tax-deductible charity.

The committee was “of the view that the purpose of granting [deductible gift recipient] status to environmental organisations should be to support practical environmental work in the community” – things such as “revegetation, wildlife rehabilitation, plant and animal pest control, land management and covenanting.”

In other words, the greenies should concentrate on fixing environmental problems, not arguing for policy that could stop them happening in the first place. Convenient, no?

Opposition MPs and even one Liberal MP issued dissenting remarks and for a while the debate went quiet, until last month when the Treasury issued a discussion paper into reform of charity tax deductibility rules in general and the rules for environmental charities in particular.

It asks for “stakeholder views” on the recommendations of the parliamentary committee, and also whether the government should go even further.

“Views are sought on requiring environmental organisations to commit no less than 25% of their annual expenditure from their public fund to environmental remediation, and whether a higher limit, such as 50%, should be considered?”

The deadline for submissions is not until 4 August but the mining industry has already sprung into action.

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The Minerals Council released its submission to the Australian this week, warning, predictably, about the activities of “activist organisations”. The NSW Minerals Council provided its submission to the same paper the next day, arguing that Lock the Gate and Greenpeace should be stripped of their tax deductible status because they “are not environmental organisations but rather professional activist groups whose objective is to disrupt and hamper the resources sector in NSW”.

And the industry is rousing members to the fight.

In a recent mail-out entitled “Help end special tax treatment for anti-mining protest groups” the NSW Minerals Council told members that “Greenpeace, Lock the Gate and groups like them currently receive Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status which means that donations to them are tax-deductible. This assists them to raise funds for illegal protests.”

Among the “suggested points” it urges its members to make in submissions to the Treasury is this one; “to be eligible for DGR status, the primary purpose of an environmental charity should be ‘on-ground’ work that improves the local environment”.

The email from the Department of the Environment suggests the government may have already made up its mind on this point, or at least be preparing to – raising legal questions about which the groups are now seeking advice.

But given we are at least going through the motions of a discussion paper, there are surely some other questions to raise.

Like, is the revenue forgone in providing tax deductions to environment groups a cost or a benefit?

It’s a small cost to the budget and a bigger cost to the mining companies whose business plans are stopped or delayed.

But if you believe Australia is a richer place for doing its part to address global warming, for limiting tree clearing, protecting endangered species or the Great Barrier Reef, or for insisting on proper remediation of mine sites, then it’s taxpayer money well spent. And, by definition, that’s a belief the hundreds of thousands of Australians who donate to environmental groups share.

And if you believe better decisions are reached when politicians, and the public, hear all the arguments, not just those from businesses with expert lobbying teams, why should a self-interested campaign by the mining industry get to disadvantage, even silence, all the voices that disagree with their business interests?